Tuesday, 17 November 2015

Can You Tell The Difference? Bashar al-Assad/Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn¹ isn't consciously a supporter of Bashar al-Assad², the Syrian president committing genocide. In the interview his quote comes from, he doesn't mention Assad once, even when he talks about what Syrian refugees are fleeing from, he says it is, "from the civil war, from ISIL, from other groups." He wants to ignore Assad's crimes in favour of blaming the Turks, the Saudis, and Western intervention, praises President Obama and hopes that a deal can be arranged with Assad's Russian partners in crime (as one activist puts it, "After Russian intervention, Syrians move from counting daily victims to counting daily massacres."³). But the almost identical language points to a closer association, the pro-Assad milieu that his press secretary Seumas Milne moves in explains why the phrasing is so similar, and bodes badly for how any Corbyn administration would deal with Assad should he last that long, and how much more disrespect a Corbyn-led Labour Party will show to those suffering the twin evils of Assad and ISIS.